Wednesday, June 4, 2003
A to Vladimir Zworykin: A Review of The World Book Concise Encyclopedia
Posted by Jordan Rosenwald in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:45 AM
Need to know the exact temperature of Absolute Zero? How about if you're walking down the street and someone asks you if you know what contributions John Von Neumann made to the field of mathematics? Who knows when you’ll need to know that the tangor is part of the mandarin family of fruits? Enter the World Book Concise Encyclopedia 2003 Handheld Edition.
PDAs are all about information… Well, and games, being organized, and multimedia. But definitely information! What better source of information than the World Book Concise Encyclopedia? If you’ve written a report for school, you’ve probably used World Book before, but how does it translate to an electronic format?
The World (Book) At Your Fingertips
Making use of the Town Compass DataViewer, The World Book Concise Encyclopedia boast 17,000 entries and 1,200 images. How they achieve so much information is by simply taking the first paragraph from the print edition, for each entry. The end result is a very concise, high level description of what you’re looking up. Not too shabby if you're on the road or in a pinch for some general information.
Figure 1: Warm, inviting, and friendly… Eh. It's just the splash screen.
Organized And Making Sense
Figure 2: Narrowing your search is simple and quick.
The layout of the reference is simple and logical, especially if you’ve used Town Compass’ DataViewer before. When you start, you are given a picture of the encyclopedia. Click OK, and move on to a list of alphabetic ranges (A-C, D-H, etc.). Select the letter range your interested and it will continue to prompt you (three times total) to drill down closer and closer to the subject matter you’re looking for. Once you select the topic you’re interested in, you will be presented with the information, including cross-reference links and a picture if there is one for the entry, in ClearType.
Figure 3: Narrowing your search
To go back to the topic list, click the back arrow or home button (looking very Pocket Internet Explorer in appearance). You can also view the index (all entries in one HUGE list), search (more on that later), refresh the view, and even beam the database (wouldn’t recommend that seeing as how it's pretty huge) or application.
Figure 4: Cross-referenced information accessible by clicking on blue text.
Searches
At first I was going to say there wasn’t much to say about this other than you could search the entries, but I was getting some strange results back when I ran some test searches. My first search (the word radon) took over 14 seconds to return four results. My seconds search, the word Jefferson took four seconds and returned 49 results. To really get silly, I searched for the word ‘the’ and got 100 results (which is a configurable maximum in the options screen) in four seconds also. Every search I ran took four to five seconds after that.
It appears that the first search indexes the database, because if you close the database entirely and reopen it, the first search again takes over 14 seconds, but each subsequent search takes four to five seconds. I have to say I’m rather pleased with that.
Gotchas
The software can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for $24.95 (affiliate link).
Specifications
The DataViewer requires 460KB and can be installed on a memory card. The database requires 12MB and can be installed to a memory card, and gives you the option to do it directly from the install!
Conclusions
The World Book Concise Encyclopedia is a great reference to have on hand. The interface is clean, the searches are fast, and the information is good (if not limited by its clarity). Add to the overall positive experience with the reference the fact that the viewer has several additional resources that are free for download and you have a pretty useful reference source.
PDAs are all about information… Well, and games, being organized, and multimedia. But definitely information! What better source of information than the World Book Concise Encyclopedia? If you’ve written a report for school, you’ve probably used World Book before, but how does it translate to an electronic format?
The World (Book) At Your Fingertips
Making use of the Town Compass DataViewer, The World Book Concise Encyclopedia boast 17,000 entries and 1,200 images. How they achieve so much information is by simply taking the first paragraph from the print edition, for each entry. The end result is a very concise, high level description of what you’re looking up. Not too shabby if you're on the road or in a pinch for some general information.
Figure 1: Warm, inviting, and friendly… Eh. It's just the splash screen.
Organized And Making Sense
Figure 2: Narrowing your search is simple and quick.
The layout of the reference is simple and logical, especially if you’ve used Town Compass’ DataViewer before. When you start, you are given a picture of the encyclopedia. Click OK, and move on to a list of alphabetic ranges (A-C, D-H, etc.). Select the letter range your interested and it will continue to prompt you (three times total) to drill down closer and closer to the subject matter you’re looking for. Once you select the topic you’re interested in, you will be presented with the information, including cross-reference links and a picture if there is one for the entry, in ClearType.
Figure 3: Narrowing your search
To go back to the topic list, click the back arrow or home button (looking very Pocket Internet Explorer in appearance). You can also view the index (all entries in one HUGE list), search (more on that later), refresh the view, and even beam the database (wouldn’t recommend that seeing as how it's pretty huge) or application.
Figure 4: Cross-referenced information accessible by clicking on blue text.
Searches
At first I was going to say there wasn’t much to say about this other than you could search the entries, but I was getting some strange results back when I ran some test searches. My first search (the word radon) took over 14 seconds to return four results. My seconds search, the word Jefferson took four seconds and returned 49 results. To really get silly, I searched for the word ‘the’ and got 100 results (which is a configurable maximum in the options screen) in four seconds also. Every search I ran took four to five seconds after that.
It appears that the first search indexes the database, because if you close the database entirely and reopen it, the first search again takes over 14 seconds, but each subsequent search takes four to five seconds. I have to say I’m rather pleased with that.
Gotchas
- Not much of a gotcha, but with the exception for quick lookup items like how far is a light-year (5.88 trillion miles) or the year The Emancipation Proclamation was made (1863), I found myself wanting more detail on several things that I looked up. But such is the limitation of a concise encyclopedia.
- Can’t copy and paste entries. I know it's to protect copyrighted material, but I’d still love that functionality.
The software can be downloaded from Handango or purchased for $24.95 (affiliate link).
Specifications
The DataViewer requires 460KB and can be installed on a memory card. The database requires 12MB and can be installed to a memory card, and gives you the option to do it directly from the install!
Conclusions
The World Book Concise Encyclopedia is a great reference to have on hand. The interface is clean, the searches are fast, and the information is good (if not limited by its clarity). Add to the overall positive experience with the reference the fact that the viewer has several additional resources that are free for download and you have a pretty useful reference source.
